Tomahawk - A few days of warm temperatures can make winter feel like it was long ago. The warm break isn't long enough to stop pipes from freezing. That's why many Northwoods cities want people to continue running their water. Tomahawk and Rhinelander still want people to run a pencil stream of water 24/7. That's to prevent pipes from freezing. "Air temperature has nothing to do with the ground temperature. Typically we have five to six feet of frost on a bad winter," said Tomahawk Public Works director, Mike Tolvstad.
"Now we've got eight and half. The frost is down below. A lot of the water mains and sanitary sewers; they're just so susceptible to freezing." They've had to thaw about 30 pipes in the past three weeks. But their big concern is water main breaks. "We're fortunate in the fact that we haven't had any main breaks. We're very very luck that way," Tolvstad said. "So there hasn't been any repairs as of yet, however we do have some sections of water main that are frozen that there's no way for them to thaw." Workers say they could find broken pipes in the spring. But they haven't had to repair anything so far. Laona just started telling people to run their water around the clock today. The Sanitary District said they'll probably have to run their water until the end of this month.